


someday i'll be calm

by protoagaz



Series: zenzen daijobanai [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 21:37:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1617911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protoagaz/pseuds/protoagaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Law has always been allergic to wheat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	someday i'll be calm

The boy looked at his tired reflection in the mirror, tried to summon even the slightest bit of curiosity or concern over the dark blurs beneath his eyes. All that replied was a total lack of care from the shallowest depths of his mind; he averted his gaze from his own face, plucked lint from the brim of his hat, and left the mirror behind, with barely the desire to hurry.

Before him stretched the hallway, as it did day after day. He made no effort to hurry, already struggling not to cringe away from the scent drifting towards him. His stomach growled, half in hunger and half with a gnawing unhappiness that slowed his steps. The scent grew with each moment, each step he inched along the hallway, hanging heavy in the air with a richness he'd once found irresistible.

Doflamingo was waiting at the dining table, as he did day after day, a looming presence that smiled down with crossed legs and folded arms. The boy bit his lip, waited to speak until he had reached his seat and was looking across the table at the giant he called "older brother". Between them lay the meal of every Monday, plateful upon plateful of steaming buttered bread coupled with golden-yolked eggs, bacon fried to crispy darkness, mounds of spiced potatoes - all the food he had looked forward to, until two weeks ago.

For a moment the boy looked at the food, fighting to ignore the scent of the bread still wafting toward him, and sifting through his mind for the words to say.

"Well?" His head snapped up to see Doflamingo smiling at him, the smile he knew more than well, the smile of a few more minutes given out of some small sense of tolerance. "Where's your appetite?"

He took a breath, and plunged into the explanation he'd prepared on the long walk down that hallway. "I...can't eat the bread, big bro. It made me sick last time I ate it, and the time before." The words hung in midair for a moment, and he saw no change in the face watching him from across the table; his empty stomach twisted anxiously and he all but spat out the final sentence, just to finish his plea. "Can I just eat the rest instead?"

In the silence that followed, his own voice rang endlessly in his mind's ear, twining around the smell of bread still flooding across his senses, and Doflamingo's expression did not change. The boy fidgeted in his chair, letting his fingers twist together in his lap and barely beginning to catch the tempting scent of eggs and bacon beneath the bread.

Then Doflamingo's smile widened. "Of course." He raised a hand, gesturing broadly at the table. "You can have everything you want."

The boy let out the breath he hadn't known to be holding, and reached out for the nearest plate of potatoes.

His hand didn't move.

Panic shot through his veins along with the realization of something very wrong, and he stared at his own hand lying limply in his lap. An instant later his fingers twitched, a motion he had not commanded, and then his arm was reaching out as he'd wanted it to, in the wrong direction, towards a plate piled with bread. He looked up, with the sharp knowledge that he was being controlled, saw Doflamingo's broad grin and fingers splayed in midair and the vein throbbing on his forehead, and his stomach twisted into an empty husk of horror.

He ate nothing but the bread for the rest of the meal, ever and always watching and watched by Doflamingo's smile, as the puppeteer's fingers made him eat. His tongue burned from the heat of the bread's fluffy insides; butter smeared along his cheeks and fingers, and the ache of tears was a harsh pressure against his eyes and in the pit of his throat. He would not cry, and at the same time felt his lips trembling with anger and fear whenever he was freed from chewing. Before he had even finished a plateful, his stomach was cramped in protesting pain.

Doflamingo let him go after some endless amount of time, and he was sick in his bathroom alone as the sun traveled slowly by outside the window.

\------

The man walked down the cramped submarine corridor, hands buried in his pockets, feeling the faint sway of an unsettled ocean's waves beneath his feet. The cool metal around him felt comforting, as it usually did when they'd surfaced at the beginnings of a small storm; his stomach rumbled faintly, the sound glancing off the walls, and he let himself smile, looking forward to dinner with his crew in the one safe place they had.

He paused for a moment outside the dining room door, hearing the bustle and noise that always came with his crew's presence. Bepo's voice rose above the rest in that innocent baritone murmur, and his smile grew a bit.

Then he entered the dining room and his stomach sank into seeming nonexistence, met by the sight of every member of his crew eating sandwiches.

The old scent of bread reached him and he pulled a hand from his pocket to lean against the wall, balling fingers into a tight fist and staring at the floor for no more than the moment afforded him. It was overwhelming, a choice of food he'd managed to avoid for years, a choice that he could not avoid now.

When he looked up again, some of the crew had already noticed him, and Bepo was hurrying over with eager concern written on his features. "Captain, I saved a seat for you!"

The man let himself be led to his usual table at the far end of the room, and steadied the trembling of his hands at the sight of sandwiches piled on his plate. The clinical half of his mind was mumbling warnings in a hushed calm monotone, digging up all the information on food allergies and intolerances that he'd learned in his long studies; and at the same time he wanted to get away from the bread, to throw it off the deck of his sub and watch it sink into the ocean for the fish.

Eventually he noticed Bepo watching him, black eyes lit with patient curiosity, and the sight made him pick up a sandwich and take a bite. Nausea rose in his throat at the taste of the bread, a harsh lump of disgust that he could barely swallow past and hardly kept off his expression. From the corner of his eye he saw Bepo smile happily and eat one of his own sandwiches in a single bite, and the jealousy of it burned in his chest as the sandwich crept its way down his throat.

He forced himself to finish the sandwich, each bite an eternity of chewing through the thick spongy layers of bread, and stared down at the others on his plate as his stomach began to ache. The conversations buzzing in the room dulled to faint talk as the meal finished, and dimly he caught a glimpse of Bepo bustling with the rest, bringing plates to the galley for washing. Then the bear's form stood by his table, and he heard him asking, "Captain, are you okay? All finished?"

Hearing the words brought in a flooding realization of the pain warping his stomach. "Get rid of that," he barely managed to push out past the nausea, and fled.

\------

The man stands on the ship's deck as the Straw Hat crew passes by him, and tries to push his thoughts past what seems the thousandth shock Monkey D. Luffy has brought him. Already his imagination is working faster than it should, bringing him the most dismal predictions of failure possible coupled with the frustration of sheer helplessness. A current of annoyance runs through him for a moment, stemming from the Straw Hats' nonchalant cheerfulness.

Abruptly, as the last of them ascend the nearby stairs, he realizes what they're saying, and an entirely new type of horror floods his mind.

"Of course, Sanji-kun's sandwiches!"

The final word reverberates within his brain like a stray rubber ball, growing louder with each echo, until he can all but smell the scent of bread and taste its rich, pasty textures in his mouth. Despite himself his heartbeat quickens with the instinct to get away; he grits his teeth, feeling for all the world like the useless child he'd been, and in that instant the words slip out.

"I hate bread!"

Almost immediately he understands the mistake he's made. A relative silence greets his shout, underscored only by the eager shouts from the dining room, but it still takes him long moments to follow the Straw Hats' path up the stairs. Somehow the trek feels fearfully similar to the old hallway he'd walked as a child, until his stomach is a mess of anxiety and he pauses outside the dining room merely to get courage.

When he walks in, nearly all the crew has already settled at the table, with only Sanji still standing, arranging plates of sandwiches. Luffy looks up to grin at him cheerfully. "Oi, Trao, you said you hated bread, right?"

Before he can answer, Luffy's turned away, with that instantaneous decision-making the man still can't grow used to. "You can make something without bread for him, right, Sanji?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure." Sanji barely turns.

The man hesitates in the doorway, with his doctor's mind whispering at him, until finally his last remnant of courage pushes him across the room to stand near Sanji. "Can you make something without any wheat ingredients?" The question nearly scorches his mouth as he speaks it, and he feels the child in him cringing, waiting for the negative reply.

Sanji glances over at him for a moment. "Allergy, huh? Sure, no problem." Placing the final plate on the table, he vanishes into the galley.

The man sits at the table, folding his hands in his lap, letting his fingers trace his own tattoos to take his mind off the wait. At the head of the table, Luffy reaches out slowly for a sandwich, only to be smacked by a frowning Nami.

"Are onigiri okay?" comes Sanji's shout from the galley.

It takes the man a moment to process that the question is for him - his choice will decide what food he eats. "Y-yeah," he calls back.

Mere moments later Sanji reemerges from the galley with a plateful of onigiri in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. His expression is faintly cold, and he shoots a quick glare at Luffy as he walks by; but all the same, he places the food in the only empty place left on the table, and leaves again.

As the others begin to eat, the man looks down at the food waiting for him, and the fact of its mere existence sinks gradually into his thoughts. For all that bread surrounds him, he has no obligation to eat a crumb of it. Onigiri, made for him, ordered into existence by the captain he's working with.

Slowly, Trafalgar Law takes off his hat, and lays it carefully on his lap before he begins to eat.


End file.
